]]>A new study has claimed that light-emitting e-readers “negatively affect sleep, circadian timing and next-morning alertness” when used in the evening. However, those reading the resulting coverage should look into the details before worrying too much.

The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), leading to scary headlines such as: “E-readers ‘damage sleep and health,’ doctors warn” (BBC); “Keep That E-Reader Out of Bed and You’ll Feel Better in the Morning” (Pacific Standard); and “Before Bed, Switch Off The E-Reader And Pick Up A Paperback” (Fast Company).

The key problem with this study and the more alarmist stories that followed, is that when it says “e-reader”, it means “Apple iPad”. An iPad at full brightness, no less. When I hear “e-reader”, I tend to think “dedicated e-reader” – an e-ink device without a backlit screen — rather than a multi-purpose tablet. And there’s a big difference.

The screens of devices such as tablets and smartphones have long been known to emit short-wavelength light, also known as blue light. All light can suppress the secretion of melatonin – the hormone that controls our day-night cycles – in the evening and night-time, but blue light has a particularly pronounced effect and previous studies have shown that it’s best avoided at night.

The new study, conducted on a small group of 12 participants, adds to these earlier studies by comparing the effects of a light-emitting “e-book” (iPad) with those of a paper book. The researchers found printed books were definitely safer, writing:

The use of light-emitting electronic devices for reading, communication, and entertainment has greatly increased recently. We found that the use of these devices before bedtime prolongs the time it takes to fall asleep, delays the circadian clock, suppresses levels of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, reduces the amount and delays the timing of REM sleep, and reduces alertness the following morning. Use of light-emitting devices immediately before bedtime also increases alertness at that time, which may lead users to delay bedtime at home. Overall, we found that the use of portable light-emitting devices immediately before bedtime has biological effects that may perpetuate sleep deficiency and disrupt circadian rhythms, both of which can have adverse impacts on performance, health, and safety.

These effects could be serious. As the researchers note, recent evidence has linked chronic suppression of melatonin secretion by nocturnal light exposure with “the increased risk of breast, colorectal, and advanced prostate cancer associated with night-shift work… which has now been classified as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization.”

But again, there’s a huge difference between an iPad and an e-ink reader such as those in the Amazon Kindle, Kobo or Barnes & Noble Nook ranges. The study does not once mention e-ink e-readers. The iPad was also “set to maximum brightness throughout the four-hour reading session, whereas, by comparison, the print-book condition consisted of reflected exposure to very dim light.”

Charles Czeisler, director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, who co-authored the study, told the Washington Post that the “standard Kindle” would provide an exception to the study’s findings as it does not emit light and was more like reading a paper book. A Vox interview with lead author Anne-Marie Chang suggests that the research was conducted between 2010 and 2011, when even the original, non-illuminated Kindle was pretty new and paper books made a better point of comparison.

There has been no mention at all of e-ink readers that are not backlit but that are illuminated, such as the Kindle Paperwhite or Nook GlowLight — which is not surprising as these devices were only introduced in 2012. Rather than lighting the screen from behind, illuminated e-ink e-readers are “front-lit” and use small LEDs around the screen, pointing inward rather than outward, to cast a glow over it (the Paperwhite channels this through “light guides” to illuminate evenly). This is more like looking at an earlier Kindle in a lit room, than it is like looking at a light shining directly into your eyes.

What’s more, these devices generally allow users to dim the light – and so do blue-light-tastic backlit tablets, for that matter.

So in short, yes, you should avoid staring at your smartphone or tablet (or PC or TV) for hours before trying to nod off. And that includes the Kindle Fire, which is after all just a tablet. But let’s give dedicated e-ink e-readers, which are very different devices, the benefit of the doubt until someone proves they also pose a danger.

]]>With Amazon’s first smartphone expected to be launched this Wednesday, we’re getting answers to one of the biggest outstanding questions about the device: the Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T will be the exclusive United States carrier for Amazon’s new smartphone.

AT&T is currently the wireless provider for Amazon’s line of cellular Kindles and the two companies’ close partnership has resulted in some interesting data plans for Amazon hardware — for instance, offering a $50 annual LTE subscription back in 2012. Amazon could be taking advantage of the “Sponsored Data” program AT&T announced earlier this year. The two-sided billing program allows content providers — like app or game developers, or in this case, Amazon — to foot the bill for customers’ data use. Amazon could conceivably pay AT&T to exempt data used for Amazon Prime music or video, or for advertisements like it displays on Kindle home screens.

In April, BGR reported that Amazon’s smartphone could come with a feature called “Prime Data.” That same report suggested that the device would be available exclusively on AT&T’s network.

Leaks and Amazon’s own promo teaser video suggest Amazon has been building an interesting device, featuring a new kind of 3D sensor and user experience. The device is expected to have four front-facing cameras and a “tilt-based” gesture interface with heavy 3D effects.

]]>Amazon is now offering selected customers the ability to purchase either a Kindle or a Kindle Fire on a interest-free payment plan. Here’s how it works:

You pay off the Kindle over five months, with 20 percent of the purchase price due each installment. For the $69 Kindle, for instance, that means five payments of $13.80, with any applicable shipping and taxes added to the first payment. What happens if you don’t pay the device off? Well, the last time Amazon ran this type of promotion, with the Kindle HDX (a much more expensive device) shortly before Christmas, it threatened to cut off access to Amazon services if the device wasn’t paid off in full.

There’s no credit check needed for this promotion. Presumably, Amazon knows you’re likely good for it based on your account history, or it doesn’t care because Kindle owners spend more on Amazon products and services. However, it seems silly to offer credit to buy Amazon’s least expensive Kindle devices. If someone would rather pay off a $69 device over five payments, how likely are they to purchase a ton of $10 ebooks?

Because it’s another one of Amazon’s targeted promotions, the deal isn’t available to everyone — I personally can’t take advantage of it — but you can check here to see if you’re eligible.

]]>Among the many numbers shared during Apple’s second-quarter results announcement on Wednesday, one stands out: 16.4 million. That’s how many iPads Apple sold in the last three months, down from the 19.5 million sold in the year ago period, and a big drop from the 26 million iPads purchased in the prior quarter.

The quarter-over-quarter number isn’t too surprising: Apple often hits sales records during the final three months of the calendar year thanks to the lucrative holiday shopping period. You can see that for all Apple products in this sales chart from 2010 to present day.

The yearly period decline, however, is a noticeable glitch in an otherwise excellent quarter for Apple. So what’s the story with Apple’s iPad?

“First, in the March quarter last year, we significantly increased iPad channel inventory, while this year we significantly reduced it. Luca will go into more detail about this later.

Second, we ended the December quarter last year with a substantial backlog with iPad mini that was subsequently shipped in the March quarter, whereas we ended the December quarter this year near supply demand balance. We continue to believe that the tablet market will surpass the PC market in size within the next few years and we believe that Apple will be a major beneficiary of this trend.”

Cook’s explanation is a good one, but it still surprises me. I can’t think of another similar company that does a better job of managing its channel inventory than Apple.

It’s surely possible that Apple did over-estimate iPad demand in the holiday quarter, resulting in leftover inventory that affected production in the last quarter; after all, that’s the period when both the new iPad Air and iPad mini with retina display hit the market. Both impressed me greatly at the October launch event and I bought my own iPad Air on release day. Maybe I’m not a good representation of iPad sales success, however.

The urge to upgrade your tablet is less than that for phones

When I bought that iPad Air, it wasn’t exactly an upgrade as I had sold my prior iPad, a first-generation iPad mini, months prior. Instead, it was a newer tablet purchase for me. And truth be told, if I already had an older iPad that was 12 to 24 months old, I’m not sure I would have spent my money on that new iPad Air. I suspect there are many others in the tablet market that feel the same and if I’m correct, that could put some downward pressure on iPad sales.

So why do people upgrade their phones on a more regular basis? For one reason, the phone market isn’t as similar to the tablet market as you might think. How many people, for example, purchase their handset in full, spending hundreds of dollars up front? Very few, at least in the U.S.

Instead, we’ve long been used to the subsidy model, where consumers pay perhaps a third of the total phone price and network operators pony up the rest in return for monthly service fees. Yes, the U.S. carriers are now removing subsidies but you can still finance a phone for zero money down and pay monthly installments.

Tablets, however, are generally sold at full price; I spent $729 for my 32 GB iPad Air with LTE, for example. It’s true that carriers offer tablets at lower, subsidized prices, but the bulk of tablet sales don’t come from these. Why would they when you can buy a tablet without an expensive, long-term contract and simply add the device to an existing data plan for $10?

Clearly, the markets are different. And after investing so much more — up front, at least — for a tablet, consumers may be willing to make do with the slate they have instead of buying a new model every year.

In March, research firm IDC suggested this very reason for a tablet slow-down, saying “In mature markets, where many buyers have purchased higher-end products from market leaders, consumers are deciding that their current tablets are good enough for the way they use them. Few are feeling compelled to upgrade the same way they did in years past, and that’s having an impact on growth rates.” Instead of following phone upgrade cycles, tablets may more closely mirror PC upgrades, which are often more than two-year cycles.

Since we’re not yet at the point where all voice is data, demand for phones is still higher than the demand for tablets. Apple’s own sales figures show this: The company sold 43.7 million iPhones, or roughly 2.67 iPhones for every iPad sold last quarter. There are likely more iPhone upgraders than iPad upgraders and all things being equal, it’s a reasonable assumption that an iPhone is considered a primary device while the iPad is a secondary one.

The premium cost of an iPad compared to that of Android-based tablets is high for some

There will always be some who suggest that iPad is the best tablet on the market, bar none. In fact, if pressed, I’d be inclined to agree; that’s why I bought one. How much more value do you get from an iPad over a less-expensive Android-based tablet though? That’s a bit more difficult to quantify, mainly because we all have different needs and budgets.

When the original iPad debuted in 2010, it had no equal, so the comparison value question was generally a moot point. Fast forward to today and you can find a wide range of comparable tablets at lower prices.

Take Amazon’s Kindle Fire 8.9 HDX, for example. I found much to like about the tablet but my wife liked it even more, immediately spending $379 to buy her own after seeing my review unit. A comparable iPad Air would have cost her $120 more but she didn’t feel it was worth it; Amazon’s tablet provided her a great experience for the activities she wants. You could argue the same point with Google’s Nexus 7, a $229 tablet that compares favorably to the $399 iPad mini with retina display. Both are great slates and some will be happy with the less-expensive Android model.

What about the phablet’s big rise?

While some scoffed at Samsung’s original Galaxy Note with 5.3-inch display, the debut of that phone in 2011 started the move towards larger-screened phones that could also provide a tablet-like experience. For some, a “phablet” can be a dual-purpose device, which could also hurt pure tablet sales. In some markets, there’s already evidence of that happening. Look back to August of last year and you’ll see that in Asia, such devices outsold traditional tablets by a factor of two.

Again, IDC has the data, noting that “device vendors shipped 25.2 million phablets in 2013 Q2, compared with 12.6 million tablets, and 12.7 million portable PCs. Phablets made a significant jump, up by 100% quarter on quarter, and up 620% for the same quarter in 2012.”

Granted, such figures are for one particular market, but it’s a huge market. Look around in whatever market you live in however, and you’re bound to know someone that has a large phone but no tablet.

For now, phones still rule the mobile roost

Apple’s dip in iPad sales may concern investors, and perhaps even the company itself, but the fact that we’re generally a phone-first and tablet-second mobile society speaks volumes to the situation. The iPad is surely a great product. Heck, it essentially re-invented the tablet market that Microsoft envisioned but couldn’t quite deliver on for years.

The iPad isn’t a “must have” product, however; at least not yet and not when compared to the portability and power of today’s mobile phones. That will change over time as tablet capabilities improve and more people transition to a post-PC world; it just may take a little longer than Apple might have thought.

]]>On Tuesday, Amazon announced a subtle but important change to its Login with Amazon service. On the newest Kindle Fires, mobile apps and games that required an Amazon login no longer require a password every time a user launches the app. Instead, the first time the app is run, Amazon will ask if the user consents to automatically log on using the account registered to their Kindle Fire. In addition, developers can now access the Login with Amazon service through Amazon’s mobile SDK.

Presumably, some of these apps offer the option to log on through Facebook or Google as well, so it makes sense that Amazon would take steps to make sure its OAuth solution works as well as possible on its own devices. Considering that many Fire TV early adopters found their devices were already logged in to their account out of the box and the compelling Amazon phone rumors that keep cropping up, Amazon seems to be laying the groundwork for a big ecosystem push this year.

Much of the Journal’s report reiterates prior leaks, so there’s not much new information here save for one of the most important aspects: An actual release date, or at least the months of Amazon’s phone announcement and launch. As far as those cameras? They’ll “employ retina-tracking technology embedded in four front-facing cameras, or sensors, to make some images appear to be 3-D, similar to a hologram,” said the Journal’s sources.

A September sale would likely pit Amazon directly against a new iPhone (or two) when vying for consumer purchases. Unlike Apple, however, Amazon typically doesn’t seek to earn profits from hardware sales but instead offers devices at lower prices and make money from related software, services and goods sold through Amazon.com.

The Journal’s sources said that Amazon has been showing off early releases of the phone hardware to developers, likely to build interest. The company already woos developers to its Amazon AppStore, which hosts modified Google Android applications that run nicely on the company’s Kindle Fire tablets. I suspect Amazon will continue to build upon the open-sourced version of Android for its phone, just as it does with the Kindle Fire and new Fire TV. Doing so keeps software development costs down as the AOSP, or Android Open Source Project, offers the basic building blocks of smartphone software for free.

In fact, with the Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon already has done much of the software work that’s needed for a phone. There’s a browser, email app, and support for third-party software. Adding cellular radios and a corresponding phone application isn’t a simple task, but the heavy lifting has already been done.

One bit of software I anticipate will surely be on Amazon’s phone is Amazon Instant Video. Although nearly any Google Android device can play music through Amazon’s MP3 player or show e-book content in the Amazon Kindle app, not a single Android phone or tablet currently supports movies or television content through Amazon. The company has never released a version of Instant Video for Android, so keeping it for its own phone will certainly stir up a little demand.

]]>It’s a safe bet many people bought or received a new smartphone or tablet for the holidays. Which ones did they get? That’s difficult to say for sure, but with some data from Chitika, we can get a pretty good idea. The company shared web surfing data through its ad network on more than 300,000 websites and found that while Apple still rules the roost, Amazon’s Kindle and Microsoft’s Surface tablets were used quite a bit online as 2013 came to a close.

On the phone side, only Apple’s iPhone saw a holiday surge of web surfing traffic, which suggests that a few new iPhone 5c and 5s handsets may have been under the Christmas tree. That “surge” wasn’t much of one though: iPhone users surfed the web 1.8 percent more during the holidays as compared to the non-holiday season. Still, the iPhone accounts for 54.3 percent of all web traffic in the U.S. and Canada as measured by Chitika.

While the handset data isn’t that surprising, the tablet information is when you consider that Microsoft’s Surface products got a small holiday surfing bump and account for 2.3 percent of all web surfing based on Chitika’s data. That may not sound like much, but the data also shows that Google Nexus tablet owners hold only 2 percent of the surfing usage. Microsoft appears to be catching up to web usage on Samsung tablets as well, which Chitika pegs at 5.9 percent.

Apple’s iPad is the only measured tablet that actually saw its browser usage share decline over the holidays as compared to its competitors, but the tablet is still the top dog… by a vast margin. Chitika’s data suggests that more than three-fourths of all tablet-based web-browsing is still done on an iPad in the U.S. and Canada.

Bear in mind that this data is simply a proxy based on a single ad network. Even though it’s a large network, the information doesn’t offer exact market share or phones or tablets. Instead, it offers a glimpse of actual usage to represent the market at large.

This post was updated at 12:00pm PT to clarify and correct Apple’s tablet browser usage share over the holidays.

Amazon had to limit new Prime member sign ups during peak periods so existing members weren’t impacted. Time to scale some more AWS boxes for Prime services perhaps, or did Amazon worry about overloading its delivery partners?

This last databit, although fairly basic, is even more enlightening: Amazon says more than half of its customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday. That’s a tipping point of sorts as the mobile web was used more than desktop. And that jives with some data out from IBM — also released on Thursday — which says mobile traffic over the holiday season accounted for 48 percent of all web surfing. Overall sales, says IBM were near 29 percent of all online transactions this holiday, up 40 percent from the prior year.

The data may give pause for those that think Amazon’s Kindle Fire strategy of selling devices for little to no profit is a bad one. Particularly when you consider that IBM’s data shows smartphones accounted for more traffic than tablets, but tablets actually rang up more sales: to the tune of $95.61 per order compared to smartphone users, who averaged $85.11 per order.

Selling millions of Kindle Fire tablets may not make Amazon money up front, but as a simple one-stop-shopping device they clearly generate sales and revenue opportunity for Amazon. Add in a Prime membership with free two-day shipping for $79 a year and Amazon has a one-two retail punch that turns people into mobile shopaholics.